Don’t talk about Alberta’s oilsands and how their development may aggravate climate change.

That’s the clear message from Ottawa to environmental charities being extensively audited by the Canada Revenue Agency to determine if they have crossed the line between public and political advocacy.

As many as 10 green charities are being audited by the CRA, while three say they are likely being investigated on complaints by Ethical Oil, a pro-Alberta oilsands, non-profit, non-governmental organization.

“Their (Ethical Oil) feeling is that by raising concern about climate change and the role of tarsands expansion . . . it is political activity,” said Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, one of the three green groups that acknowledged it is being audited on the basis of complaints made by Ethical Oil.

The David Suzuki Foundation and Tides Canada are the other two.

If the revenue agency says these groups have stepped out of line, they could lose their charitable status. By law, charitable groups are allowed to spend 10 per cent of their resources on non-partisan political activities related to their charity.

Ethical Oil calls itself an online community that “empowers people to become grassroots activists on the frontlines of the campaign for ethical oil” from Canada’s oilsands. It was started as a blog by Alykhan Velshi, who is currently the director of issues management in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office.

Environmental groups say Ethical Oil is funded by the oil and gas industry. Ethical Oil’s website says it accepts “donations from Canadian individuals and companies, including those working to produce Ethical Oil.”

Ethical Oil did not respond to requests for comment by the Star.

The CRA audits of environmental charities haven’t come completely out of the blue.

In 2012’s federal budget, the government allocated $8 million to the revenue agency to take a closer look at environmental charities and their political activities, a move that was denounced as a witch hunt by opposition members then.

The Pembina Foundation, Equiterre and Ecology Action Centre are among the other groups being audited.

CRA routinely audits charities. There is nothing wrong with that, said Marcel Lauzière, president of Imagine Canada, an umbrella organization that supports charities and nonprofits.

But about 18 months ago, Lauzière started hearing about audits focused on green groups.

He knows of seven to 10 environmental groups under CRA scrutiny.

“There are enough out there for us to be concerned about this focus,” said Lauzière. It is putting charities on the edge and sending a negative message to Canadians that charities have no role in public policy, he said.

“That is not true at all,” Lauzière added.

There are more than 85,000 charities in Canada. Lauzière estimates that a few thousand of these are working on issues related to the environment.

The lines between education, advocacy and permissible versus non-permissible political activity are a bit grey, said David R. Boyd, an environmental lawyer and professor at Simon Fraser University.

“It is also very challenging to do the record keeping required to meet the 10 per cent threshold,” he said. This uncertainty, he said, adds to the challenges facing charities whose positions on public policy are different from those of this government.

For Gray, of Environmental Defence, there is a clear difference between advocacy work and political activity. “Our view is it’s our job is to point out that climate change is a grave threat to humanity and expansion of tarsands will aggravate it.”

The government, he said, seems to have a different view of what is appropriate activity for charities than we have ever experienced before.

“The kind of charity that may have existed in the 19th century, where you are allowed to feed the hungry but not to comment on why they are hungry,” said Gray.

CRA began auditing Environmental Defence in late 2011. Gray believes it was a routine audit near completion until the Ethical Oil complaint.

“Then we heard nothing for a bit,” he said.

About two months ago, the group received the report from the CRA and Gray said they are now in the process of responding.

He wouldn’t say whether CRA has threatened to strip Environmental Defence of its charitable status.

The David Suzuki Foundation was audited by the CRA a few months ago but Peter Robinson, its CEO, said he hasn’t heard back from the agency.

Auditors were very careful to not say anything about the reasons, said Robinson, “but I know audits are usually random or driven by complaints.” Ethical Oil, he said, always made public their complaints.

“Sometimes they used to even send them (complaints) to us what they were sending to the CRA,” he said.

It’s highly coincidental that the audit would have occurred after several complaints by Ethical Oil, Robinson pointed out.

Robinson said the foundation has all the systems in place to report and track political activity.

But audits, ironically, mean that donor money earmarked for other purposes like education or conservation “was diverted from the donor’s intent and put into the audit.”

For at least one group, the audit is complete.

The audit of the Halifax-based Ecology Action Centre, a well-known think-tank, began in 2012 and just wrapped up.

Mark Butler, the centre’s policy director, said that among other things, CRA focussed on “our political activities and whether we were within the 10 per cent rule,” he said.

The centre is in the clear.

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